What are the risks of unsafe sex?

• unwanted pregnancy.
• venereal diseases (such as gonorrhoea and, much less commonly, syphilis).
• other sexually transmitted infections (such as herpes, pubic lice, and viral wartsand especially the 21st century‘s major risk – chlamydia).
• HIV – the virus that can cause AIDS.
• cancer of the cervix.
• female infertility – due to pelvic infection caused by sex with an infected man.

What is safe sex?

Four final sex tips to remember

• Avoid casual sex.
• If you don't want to have a baby, use contraception.
• If you do have sex with someone who is not your regular, faithful partner – use a condom throughout.
• Remember that alcohol can make us forget all we know about practising safer sex.

(http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/sex_relationships/facts/safesex.htm)

Helping Hands Pregnancy & Parenting Center Inc in Oakhurst, California (ca)

• Over 90% of parents and teens think teens should be taught to abstain from sexual activity until they have at least finished high school.
  Source: National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, Americans Sound Off About Teen Pregnancy, December 2003, p.8.
• Although Abstinence education is of fairly recent origin, there are currently ten evaluations showing that abstinence education programs are effective in reducing teen sexual activity.
  Source: Robert Rector, The Effectiveness of Abstinence Education Programs in Reducing Sexual Activity Among Youth The Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, No. 1533, April 8, 2002.

• 85% of parents say they talk to their teenager very often or somewhat often about sex and sexual relationships, only 41% of those parents teens said their parents talked to them very often or somewhat often about sex and sexual relationships.
  Source: National Survey of Young Teens Sexual Attitude and Behaviors conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International
• A 1997 longitudinal study of 12,000 adolescents found that teens were more likely to delay intercourse when they felt emotionally connected to their parents and when their parents disapproved of their being sexually active or of using contraception.
  Source: Michael D. Resnick et al., Protecting Adolescents from Harm: Findings from the National Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Health, Journal of American Medicine 278, September 10, 1997; pp. 823-832.
• Most teens (69%) agree it would be much easier for them to postpone sexual activity and avoid teen pregnancy if they were able to have more open, honest conversations about these topics with their parents.
  Source: The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. (2002) With one voice 2002: Americas adults and teens sound off about teen pregnancy. Washington, D.C.
• 10-12 year olds want more information about: How to handle pressure to have sex-44%; How to know when youre ready to have sex-43%; How alcohol and drugs might affect decisions to have sex-43%.
  Source: 2003 Kaiser Family Foundation study.
• Forty-eight percent of adults said it was embarrassing for teenagers to admit being virgins, but just 26 percent of teenagers believed the same. Eighty-five percent of teenagers said sex should occur only in a long-term committed relationship, up from 82 percent surveyed last year. Three in 10 teenagers say they have become more opposed over the last few years to having sex.
  Source: National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy in 12/03.

• Study shows that increased abstinence accounted for 67% of the decrease in pregnancy rate among unmarried teenage girls aged 15-19. When surveyed about their sexual history, a majority of these teens reported that abstinence education played an important role in helping them abstain from sex until at least after high school.
  Source: April 2003 study from Adolescent and Family Health Journal- finding written up in Heritage article
• Three out of five Hispanic girls in the U.S. become pregnant by age 20.
  Source: National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy analysis, using National Vital Statistics and Current Population Trends reports.
• One in three children is born out of wedlock.
  Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics Report, 2001.
• 27% of mothers who began sexual activity at ages 13-14 were living in poverty as adultsmore than twice the number who waited until their 20s to begin having sex.
  Source: 2003 Heritage Foundation study.
• Emory University surveyed one thousand sexually experienced teen girls by asking them what they would like to learn to reduce teen pregnancy. Nearly 85 percent said, "How to say no without hurting the other person's feelings."
  Source: Emory University

• 3.8 million STD cases are contracted by US teens-the highest contraction rate within the general US population. In fact, almost 45% of all teenagers and young adults are infected with at least one STD by their mid-twenties.
  Source: The American Social Health Association.
• Every year 3 million teens25% of sexually active teenscontract an STD. [Please note this is slightly lower than the number reported in the bullet above by a different source]
  Source: The Alan Guttamacher Inst.,Teen Sex & Pregnancy,Facts in Brief, 1999
• About 25% of all new cases of STDs occur in teenagers and 2/3 of all new cases occur in those aged 15-24.
  Source: Linda L. Alexander, ed., et al., STDs in America: How many cases and at what cost? The Kaiser Family Foundation, December 1998.
• HPV is the leading viral STD, with 5.5 million new cases reported each year.
  Source: American Social Health Association, STD statistics.
• HPV causes nearly all cases of cervical cancer that kill approximately 4,800 women per year.
  Source: American Cancer Society, Cancer Facts and figures, 1998.
• The Institute of Medicine estimates that the overall costs of Sexually Transmitted Diseases -- excluding AIDS -- presently exceeds $10 billion a year. Often the money to treat the STDs is paid for directly or indirectly by the federal government.
  Source: The Institute of Medicine

• Study finds that 25% of sexually active girls say they are depressed (versus 8% of non-sexually active girls), dispelling the myth portrayed in popular culture that sexual activity equates with happiness. 14% of girls who have had intercourse have attempted suicide; 5% of sexually inactive girls have. 6% of boys who have had sex have attempted suicide; less than 1% of sexually inactive boys have.
  Source: 2003 Heritage Foundation
• In 2000, 63% of sexually active teens said they wish they had waited longer to become sexually active.
  Source: Not just another thing to do: teens talk about sex, regret, and the influence of their parents, National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy; 6/30/00

• When compared to sexually active teens, those who abstain from sexual activity during high school years are 60% less likely to be expelled from school, 50 percent less likely to drop out of high school, and almost twice as likely to graduate from college.
  Source: Robert Rector, Teenage Sexual Abstinence and Academic Achievement, August, 2005

• When compared to teens who did not take a virginity pledge, teenagers who took a pledge are less likely to engage in sexual intercourse, less likely to engage in oral sex, less likely to engage in anal sex, and less likely to engage in sex with or act as prostitutes.
  Source: Kirk A Johnson Ph.D., Robert Rector, Adolescent Virginity Pledges and Risky Sexual Behaviors, June 14, 2005

• 82% of parents agreed with the statement Waiting to have sex is a nice idea but not many teens really do wait. 65% of teens agreed with the same statement. Only 45% of teens thought touching someones genitals was sex. 66% agreed that there was pressure on teens to have sex by a certain age. Only 21% of teens had ever touched someones genitals, only 12% had had oral sex, and only 13% had had sexual intercourse. 88% of teens who had not had sexual intercourse said that the reason was because they had made a conscious decision to wait.
  Source: National Survey of Young Teens Sexual Attitude and Behaviors conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International
• Two out of three sexually active teens wish they had waited to have sex and more than 8 in 10 teens think they should be taught to wait until marriage to have children.
  Source: National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.

• Condom use offers relatively little protection (from zero to some) for herpes and no protection from the deadly HPV. On average, condoms failed to prevent the transmission of HIV between 15% and 31% of the time.
  Source: Dr. Susan Weller, A meta-analysis of condom effectiveness in reducing sexually transmitted HIV, Social science and medicine, vol. 36, no. 12 (1993). See also National Institute of Allergy and infectious diseases, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Summary, Scientific Evidence on condom effectiveness for sexually transmitted disease prevention, July 20, 2001.
• The government spends $4.50 on "safe sex" programs aimed at teens for every $1 invested in abstinence.
  Source: The Heritage Foundation, 2004.
• These spending priorities are the exact opposite of what parents want. In a recent Zogby poll, 85 percent of parents said the government's emphasis on abstinence for teens should be equal or greater than the emphasis placed on contraception. Only eight percent said teaching teens to use condoms is more important than teaching them abstinence.
  Source: Zogby

• Individuals who engage in premarital sex are 50% more likely to divorce than those who do not.
  Source: Joan R. Hahn and Kathryn A. London, Premarital sex and the risk of divorce, Journal of Marriage and the Family, November 1991, pp.845-855.

• Sexually active boys aged 12-16 are four times more likely to smoke and six times more likely to use alcohol than are those who describe themselves as virgins. Girls are seven times more likely to smoke and 10 times more likely to use marijuana than virgins.
  Source: (D.P. Orr, M. Beiter, and G. Ingersoll, Premature sexual activity as an indicator of psychosocial risk, Pediatrics, vol. 87, no. 2 (February 1, 1991), pp. 141-147. See also Kimberly Erickson, Interconnections: Emerging patterns in youth risk behavior, Institute for Youth Development, Washington, D.C., June 1, 1998.)